Game review – Until Dawn: Rush of Blood is a shoddy bait-and-switch cash grab
Don’t be fooled by this cheesy VR game, which markets itself as a sequel to last year’s Until Dawn, but has few ties to the original and plays like it was hastily developed
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood
Supermassive Games
2/5 stars
Last year’s Until Dawn was a cool little adventure game – a Cabin in the Woods-style meta look at horror clichés, such as the way games are structured and how people in the real world end up playing them. I’ve fond memories of the experience, even if the game only lasted a few hours. So you can imagine how my interest was piqued when the virtual reality game Rush of Blood appeared on the radar.
You can also imagine my confusion, disappointment, frustration and anger when I realised the game doesn’t have anything to do with the original Until Dawn, apart from the fact that the cheeky developers decided to reel in unsuspecting buyers by using the title on the cover.
Basically, it’s a horrible game (quite different from being “a horror game”), an arcade-style first-person shooter that uses a crappy roller-coaster structure, a cheesy carnival setting and awful, rail-shooting gameplay to serve up one of the worst examples of bait-and-switch in recent memory.
The controls are rigid and zombie-like, the levels filled with formulaic “weirdness” that never feels strange or scary, and the bosses that eventually appear after you’ve blasted your way through dozens of clowns or whatever are completely uninspired.
Even with the tenuous connection that comes later in the game – it’s all taking place inside the original villain’s head – Rush of Blood screams cash-grab. I’d love to have been served up something decent with the Until Dawn name, especially if it was a decent shooter sold as downloadable content.
But this? A full-priced release marketed as a sequel and targeted at giddy VR fans and horror geeks? Forget it.
